


The Sixth Life of Lachlan Nikhil Rebane, or, Tribble the Therapy Cat's Excellent Academy Adventure

by samalander



Category: ST:AOS - Fandom
Genre: A matchmaking kitty, Kitty - Freeform, Matchmaking, POV Animal, this was a bad idea
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-09-24
Updated: 2011-09-24
Packaged: 2017-12-13 05:12:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,830
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/820389
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/samalander/pseuds/samalander
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bones gets Jim a kitty and then they have a kitty. Academy fic.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Sixth Life of Lachlan Nikhil Rebane, or, Tribble the Therapy Cat's Excellent Academy Adventure

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Leave the Gun. Take the Cannoli.](https://archiveofourown.org/works/820388) by [samalander](https://archiveofourown.org/users/samalander/pseuds/samalander). 



> A companion of sorts to [Leave the Gun. Take the Cannoli.](http://archiveofourown.org/works/820388) in which I decided Jim had a therapy cat. People wanted to know more, and suddenly there was half a fic.  
> With thanks to everyone who encouraged me on Unfinished Fic Wednesday over at [](http://jim-and-bones.livejournal.com/profile)[**jim_and_bones**](http://jim-and-bones.livejournal.com/) as well as my constant enablers, [](http://theoreticalpixy.livejournal.com/profile)[**theoreticalpixy**](http://theoreticalpixy.livejournal.com/) and [](http://emmypenny.livejournal.com/profile)[](http://emmypenny.livejournal.com/)**emmypenny**.

_The sixth time Lachlan Nikhil Rebane returned to the world, he did so as a small, pathetic bit of fluff._

_He was only dimly aware of this fact. Mostly, he was aware of cold and hungry and scared. He opened his mouth to express these things, whiskers trembling on his nose, and all he made was a squeak._

_This would have upset Lachlan much more if he had been aware of what he was before, but, naturally, he was not. Suffice it to say; the sixth incarnation of Lachlan Nikhil Rebane was a small orange cat with a white patch behind his left ear and a tendency to sleep as close as he could to people without being on top of them._

* * *

When Jim came back to the dorm, he immediately smelled something different - something fresh, maybe, not quite antiseptic, but something like the way the air smelled after rain.

"Bones?"

Jim dropped his bag on his bed and bent to unlace his boots. He'd gotten as far as untying the right one when a small orange bit of fuzz popped out from under his bed and swatted at his laces.

Jim screamed and jumped back, managing to trip himself and fall with a resounding thud against Bones' desk.

He shook his head to clear it as the creature's face emerged from under the bed. Little orange ears, little white whiskers, and a little pink nose emerged before Jim's head resolved them into a word: Kitten. There was a kitten in his dorm room.

 _Weird_.

* * *

By the time Bones got back to the room, armed with some squeaky mice and bowls and a litter box, Jim and the kitten had become tentative friends. Jim was lying on his bed, dangling the instigating bootlace, now free of its boot, over the side as the kitten swatted, pawed, and otherwise did his best to kill it.

"You're back early," Bones noted, depositing his purchases on his desk.

"Yeah, Captain Li ended and- is this your cat?"

Bones smiled. "Nah, he's for you."

"Me?"

"Well," Bones ran a hand through his coiffed hair, causing the ends to stand up like a hedgehog. "That's the- okay, so I'm pulling rotations in the Abnormal Psych lab and I have to talk to actual people to get data and well, you're the least objectionable person I've met on the campus, so you wanna be in my experiment?"

Jim furrowed his brow. "You want me to be a lab rat?"

"Technically, I want to give you a lab kitten."

Jim shook his head. "No, no. I'll get all attached and want to keep it."

"You can keep it."

"Forever?"

Bones laughed. "I think one day, one of you is gonna die. But he's classified as a therapy animal and they can't stop you from having one of those."

"Therapy animal?"

"Yeah, okay." Bones took a deep breath, and Jim wondered why this was so hard for the man. Just last week they'd spent three hours tossing a tennis ball and comparing the asses of their TAs, and now this project had his friend all flustered. It was a little adorable. "So the experiment is about cadets with, uh, violent pasts. And how they acclimate to the academy."

"No." Jim stood, scooping the little cat who he had totally not named Tribble into his hands and holding it out to Bones. "I don't want you publishing-"

The kitten mewed and squirmed, tail flicking in frustration.

"No publishing. No names. Just, _Cadet K got into fights, I gave him a kitty, awwww, lookit him widdwe toesies_."

Jim blinked. "Okay," he said, putting Tribble down, and watching as he took a run back under the bed. "But only if you solemnly swear to use the words ‘widdwe toesies' in your paper."

Bones rolled his eyes, but there was a smile there, and Jim figured worst case scenario, he could train the cat to sneeze in his roommate's food. That seemed like a fitting revenge. In the meantime, there were tiny meows coming from under his bed, and those needed seeing to.

* * *

Jim was actually, by some miracle, good at taking care of the cat.

He didn't mind cleaning the box, remembered to feed him, and even figured out that the cat did much better with sleeping if someone played with it for a few hours.

Then again, Tribble tended to do most of his throwing up on Bones' bed, so it worked out for both of them.

Jim had to fill out a survey every month, and he and Tribble both had to go to the clinic for scans, but all-in-all, it was nice having a friend who, as Bones said, would always be there. Sure, Tribble couldn't score chicks at the bar (well, he totally could, he was the most handsome boycat of them all, but the bars seemed to have some kind of stupid anti-kitten agenda) but Jim found he was less interested in going out cruising at night when there was a little life waiting to be cared for in the dorms.

So Tribble grew fat and happy and had funny tufty ears that he let Jim pull on when he was in a mood, and Jim found himself more and more content with the way his life was going.

* * *

_Lachlan and the boy lived in what the boy called a "dorm" at a school. The boy would be gone most of the day, and Lachlan would watch the people below, red people skittering from building to building. He wondered idly what they had to do that was more important than eating bugs and finding perfect sunbeams, but the people below seemed to do it every day._

_The boy liked to invite girlpeople over sometimes, to meet Lachlan. They would coo and gasp, tell him he was pretty and scratch his belly. Lachlan tolerated the girlpeople, but at the end of the day, he was pretty sure his boy wanted to be with the one he called Bones, or roommate, or sometimes McCoy (humans had a lot of names for things, and Lachlan thought it was terribly complicated to call the same thing so many words. Why not just twitch your whiskers?) and he was sure the roomiebonescoy wanted the boy in return. So, he decided, that should happen._

* * *

The cat was trying to tell him something.

Jim had been convinced of this for at least a week. Every morning he woke up with Tribble's face centimeters from his own, the cat's eyes peering into him like it knew things. (Things like what? Jim lived in two and a half rooms with a cat and Bones, it's not like he had that many secrets left to learn.) Every morning, when Jim opened his eyes, there Tribble was. Watching. Waiting. Using his creepy cat telepathy.

"Cats do not have creepy telepathy."

Bones didn't believe Jim's extremely scientific hypothesis.

"Tribble does."

They were sharing Andorian takeout in their room, Jim loudly slurping his _zhiassa_ as Bones stared disapprovingly.

"And why do you think Tribble has creepy cat telepathy?"

Jim shrugged and speared a bit of _dreaak_ from Bones' plate. "I dunno, he's always, you know, staring at the walls, like they're talking to him, and he gets right up in my face when I sleep like he can taste my dreams and--"

"Jim." It was less a name than a command, and Jim glanced up at his friend's hazel eyes. "He's a cat. Those are things cats _do_."

Jim shook his head. Bones just didn't get it. "Yeah, but Tribble? He's special."

* * *

_Lachlan was glad his boy thought he was special, and he returned the sentiment. The boy was always good to Lachlan, he was always there when Lachlan needed a belly rub, and he never let the water bowl go dry._

_Yes, they had their issues, and how was Lachlan to know that it was bad form to get on the bed when the boy was naked with a girl? They did okay, though, and Lachlan found himself getting large and fat, his jumps more powerful and his ears more keen. The boy told him this was "getting big" and occasionally told him how handsome he was, but Lachlan would have known without being told._

_He'd even learned how to get the boy out of bed - there was a spot on the wall, that, if Lachlan hit it just right, all the lights turned on, and the grumpy one hated it, but Lachlan's boy, the one who mattered, would laugh and roll over and say "come on Bones, he's your fault!" which might have meant something to Lachlan if he had a concept of "fault" but, well, cat._

* * *

The first time Jim celebrated McCoy's birthday, it had been a small affair. A mess hall cupcake, a silver party hat, and a stuffed skeleton Jim called Bones, Jr.

The first sign that things were getting weird was when Bones, Jr. started showing up in Jim's bed. The first time, when he'd come back from classes to Tribble winding around his ankles, Jim didn't even notice.

"Hey, buddy," he muttered, dropping his stuff on the floor, where it would later do a fantastic job of tripping Bones, and rubbing Tribble's ears. "How was your day?"

The cat purred, and Jim suppressed a smile. It had been a shitty day- the gloomy weather just compounded the monotony of his lectures, the drag of the day, the unexpected dry streak he was going through in the bedroom. But something about coming home to Tribble made Jim's mood lift. "Mine was okay," he told the cat, sitting down to unlace his boots. "I had my usual classes, spent some time with Hikar-"

He cut himself off as he felt the lump on his bed, where he had just sat. He glanced at Tribble. "If you pooped in the bed, little guy, you're fired," he said, before standing and peeling the covers back.

There, where Tribble usually took his sun naps, was Bones, Jr.

Jim raised an eyebrow, glancing from the cat to the toy and back again.

"Okay, so, you're a cat, so you probably don't know this," he said, lifting the small skeleton and replacing it on Bones' desk, "but it's bad form to touch your roommate's stuff. I mean, he's Bones and so vomit is kinda part of the package, right, it's where our friendship _began_. But leave the tchotckies alone, yeah?"

Jim jumped in surprise as the aforementioned roommate cleared his throat in the doorway. "Since when do you leave my stuff alone?" Bones asked, a smile playing across his bitable lips.

"I don't," Jim grinned, snagging a stick of gum from the pack Bones kept in his drawer. "But I want Tribble to join civilized society and go to kittycat college one day, so he needs to know these things."

Bones rolled his eyes. "You are so fucking weird," he sighed, but he was smiling, and Jim smiled back.

* * *

The second strange thing after Jim started keeping track was that both his and Bones' socks started to disappear.

It wasn't unusual for Jim; he wasn't always the best at taking care of objects, tending to leave dirty socks on the floor until he didn't have any more. But Bones was the kind of guy who freaking safety-pinned his socks together before he washed them, so they'd always be in a pair. For him to lose single socks, it was like the moon suddenly decided to shine brighter than the sun.

Or for Jim to be good at metaphors.

But they both started losing socks, and once Bones was done accusing Jim of taking them (to do what exactly, neither man was sure, but who the fuck else could take them?) they set about doing an actually thorough search of the rooms. Jim found the nest first, the carefully assembled pile, stacked between the couch and the wall, composed of both men's discarded socks and a few odd pairs of underwear.

"The fuck is this?" he asked Bones, staring helplessly. "I mean, did-"

Tribble chose that moment (because he was a conniving, smart cat) to prance out of the bedroom, Jim's lucky rocket ship underpants in his mouth, and make a beeline for the sockpile.

He purred the whole time, Tribble did, as he pranced (not pranced, something manlier, fit for the King of Cats) to his little hideaway and nudged the underwear into the side of it, before proceeding to lift his feet in a rhythmic motion, as though he was kneading dough, on top of the laundry.

"Bones," Jim whispered, dumbfounded at the sight. "The fuck is my cat doing?"

"I don't even know," Bones returned, his voice and face as bewildered as his friends, "but I think he needs the vet."

Tribble looked up on them, looking as pleased as a cat could look, before solidly settling down into the dirty-sock-and-underwear bed and giving himself a leisurely bath.

Neither man exactly had the heart to reclaim their socks from such a contented feline, but Jim did manage to snag back his underwear. He shrugged at Bones' glance. "They're lucky," Jim said. "I need them for classes."

Bones just shook his head, and made a mental note to buy more socks. And a hamper with a lid.

* * *

Things calmed down a little after the discovery of Tribble's sock nest. Bones, Jr. still made semi-weekly pilgrimages to Jim's bed, but they were all getting used to that by now, and life was going on.

If anything, Tribble made life together for Jim and Bones a little easier - they each had a sympathetic tufty ear to whisper to, and a small warm fluffball who would sit on their chests, if they sat still and ignored it long enough.

Christmas was a melancholy time in the Kirk-McCoy dorm room, a time when both men tended to shut down and drown their perceived lack of family in the comforts of eggnog and rumballs.

But this Christmas was going to be different. Jim was excited for it; neither of them was going anywhere, opting to stay on campus rather than pretend they fit in where they came from, so he was going to celebrate Tribble's first holiday season the way it should be celebrated.

Due to the nature of cats, this was a rather spectacular disaster.

The tree went up well enough, smallish and plastic and green in the corner of the room, followed by a set of decorative paper chains that he totally didn't skip class to finish. Then the real decorations - the delicate glass balls on the branches of the tree, and silvery garlands and candy canes.

Jim came home from class the last day before break to find a mess of shredded paper, broken glass, and toppled tree, with a rather pleased looking kitten lounging at its center.

"Tribs," he asked, using his best Dad Voice. "Did you ruin Christmas?"

Tribble licked his paw and swiped it over his face casually. Jim sighed and made his way into the room, grabbing for a trash bag on the way.

* * *

Most of the mess was cleaned by the time Bones got in from a shift at the clinic, but there were still scraps of paper chain and bits of candy cane strewn in corners and under chairs.

"Jim?" Bones asked, kicking off his boots at the door. "Everything okay?"

Jim popped his head around the corner, looking harassed. "Christmas is ruined," he grumped, then withdrew his head.

"Was there a Grinch?" Bones asked, pulling his shirts over his head. "Did he take your roast beast?"

Jim didn't reply - he didn't seem amused, and as Leonard entered the bedroom, he found why; Jim was sitting cross-legged on his bed, a rather sedated Tribble in his lap.

"Is he okay?" Bones asked, and Jim looked up at him with clear blue eyes.

"I don't know he - he made this mess, destroyed Christmas, and I was mad at him, right? So I went to clean up and he threw up on your bed and it was shiny."

Bones furrowed his brow. "Jim, did you use tinsel?"

Jim nodded. "And paper chains and candy canes-"

"Right, okay," Bones took a deep breath, because Jim was going to take this hard. "But, and you couldn't have known this, cats eat tinsel and it cuts up their stomachs. We need to take him to the emergency vet, now."

Jim spent a moment sputtering before he stood, the kitten cradled in his lap giving off a sad meow. "Right, vet. You're driving," he said, and was out the door, no boots, no jacket and no goddamn common sense, before Bones could even open his mouth to agree.

The drive was tense, Bones taking corners too sharply and driving too fast, and Jim petting Tribble's soft fur, cooing and telling him he as okay, he was fine, he was going to make it.

The vet wasn't far from campus; a few miles at most, but it felt like a year and a half before Jim was able to hand his kitten to the nurse and sit, his head in his hands, on the hard wooden bench of the waiting room.

Bones sat with him, a comforting hand sometimes finding its way to Jim's shoulder or his knee, but freezing there, like he didn't dare to squeeze or offer comfort in any real way. Jim shivered in the cold of the waiting room, the anxiety and fear and something else, something about the way Bones smelled, curling around his heart and holding tight.

The hospital had a resident cat, an old tom with one eye missing and half a tail, who seemed to have some fundamental questions about what Jim and Bones were doing, slumped against the wall, and where his friend The Nurse had gotten to. He squeezed between them, purring a little, and Jim lifted his hand to scratch between the cat's ears.

"You know," Jim offered, his voice ringing in the empty waiting room, "if Tribble and I are a matched set, you and this cat can be, too."

Bones glanced at his roommate, eyes full of something that wasn't quite scorn.

"I already have a pet, dumbass, I have you. Don't need anything else in my life, vomiting on things and humping my leg."

Jim, to his own surprise, cracked a smile at that. "I thought you liked it when I humped your leg."

Bones rolled his eyes. "I'm gonna get you fixed, just wait."

The old cat, who Jim had named Grumples in honor of Bones, rolled over, looking up at them with his one yellow eye.

"Think he's okay in there?" Jim barely thought before he said it, the words just sliding out without much input from his brain.

"Yeah," Bones said, and slid his hand over Jim's, squeezing his fingers gently. Jim sighed, and leaned back on the bench. "He'd better be."

* * *

The surgery seemed to drag on, and Jim was tired. Bones' hand was heavy and warm on his, and the cold of the waiting room was comforting, like a breeze on a warm day, or a simile that made sense to someone who wasn't in Jim's head.

The hours ticked by, Grumples the Bones Cat smushed between them and showing no signs of moving, Jim's bare feet drawing abstract lines on the bare floorboards.

He didn't even notice falling asleep, didn't know when he had relaxed enough for his head to fall onto Bones' shoulder, their fingers entwined on Grumples' head, and the smells of antiseptic and animal and Bones mixing into a heady, comforting scent that made Jim want to stay forever in that space.

Soft hands gripped his shoulders, gently nudging him out of his reverie (he wasn't asleep, no way) and Jim looked into the soft brown eyes of the stunning young nurse.

"Cadet Kirk," she said, and there was an accent under her Standard, a lilting South Asian something that Jim found somehow reassuring.

Jim chose share that with her. He rubbed the not-sleep out of his eyes. and nodded. "How's Tribs?" he asked,

"Your cat is fine, Cadet Kirk," she had a gentle way about her, something that set Kirk at ease, and made him pretty sure that she wasn't lying to him. Still, she gave him a look that made his ego deflate a little before she laid it out for him. "However, you put him in danger - you need to be more careful with the things you have in your residence."

Jim nodded. "I know, I just - it was his first Christmas."

The nurse smiled sadly. "I understand that, Cadet, but this is a living animal. You need to remember that he is fragile. okay?"

Jim nodded. "Can I see him?"

Her pretty smile was back, and Jim realized that she wasn't trying to make him feel bad, wasn't trying to berate him, she just loved animals more than people, like the way some of the Engineers liked ships, or the way Pike liked rules. "Of course you may," she said, and gestured for him to follow her back.

Jim reached back and felt Bones' hand find his, fingers gently entwining as they followed the young nurse back to see their kitty.

* * *

_Lachlan had no memory in his tiny cat brain of ever being as tired as he was, of being as sore and annoyed and exhausted as his current state would imply._

_He remembered bits and pieces of the proceeding hours, or what seemed to him like the proceeding hours; the long shiny things, the sleepiness and sharpness, the worried look on his boys' faces._

_Tentatively, Lachlan opened one eye, peeking out into the world._

_His boy was there, standing with the other one, smiling and saying soft words, like handsome and nice and good kitty._

_Lachlan opened his mouth to respond, but nothing came out besides air, and it hurt._

_"It's okay, little guy," the other man said, poking a finger through the bars that would separate them if Lachlan could move enough to get to them. "You had an obstruction, but you're going to be okay."_

_Lachlan didn't fully understand, didn't comprehend what he was saying, but the tone was soothing, and when he removed the finger from the inches in front of Lachlan's face, the hand it was on fell to Lachlan's boy's shoulder, giving a squeeze_

_Good, Lachlan thought sleepily, deciding that it would be a really great time to sleep for twelve, maybe thirteen hours. At least he'd gotten them touching._

* * *

Tribble was due to be in the kitty hospital overnight, and Jim was pretty sure he had managed to ruin Christmas completely by letting the cat get hurt. He barely spoke on the ride back to the dorm, sitting silently in the passenger seat and watching the lights of San Francisco flash by as Bones muttered reassuring nothings.

They were home for no more than fifteen minutes before Jim couldn't take it. Everything reminded him of Tribble, and being reminded of Tribble made him feel like shit.

"I'm going out," he told Bones, as he pulled on his tightest pair of jeans.

Bones raised his eyebrow. "Oh?"

"Yeah, don't wait up."

Bones just shook his head. "Please don't get arrested."

Jim smiled. "No promises. Have a nice night!"

* * *

Jim was flying high. He'd been given a purple-pink drink by a woman who said her name was Belen and her partner, an attractive yellow-skinned non-binary with a name Jim couldn't begin to remember or pronounce.

The drink had gone straight to his head, which seemed strange until he realized he'd forgone drinking for months, opting instead to stay home with Tribble and Bones.

Belen was whispering something in Jim's ear about the things she and her partner wanted to do with him, as said partner trailed one of his gelatinous appendages up Jim's thigh. It was a charming kind of high, not caring who touched him where, being wanted, being out in this world again, but something seemed wrong, somehow, something seemed like he wasn't quite _Jim_ enough for all of this.

He drained the purple-pink concoction and was going to suggest that his new friends show him their place when the bartender tapped him on the shoulder and shoved a cold glass of clear something into his hand.

"From that guy," she said, pointing at the other end of the crowded bar.

"That guy" was familiar, tall and dark, but the lighting in the bar wasn't terribly conducive to anything besides drinking. Jim waved at the man, who started to make his way over as Jim sipped the drink.

Which was water.

"Hey," the stranger drawled and holy fuck, Jim had never seen Bones look so fucking _lickable_ before. He was wearing pants that were tight in all the right places, and a shirt with a collar so low Jim thought he would be able to see Bones' bellybutton if he bent right.

"Bones?"

"Yeah. Thought you might need a friend."

Belen smiled at Jim, looking from him to Bones. "He has some new friends, honey. We'll take care of him."

Bones shrugged. "If that's what Jim wants, then sure. Jim?"

Jim was completely unsure of what he wanted. He wanted to see the seven stars Belen and her partner had promised, wanted to experience all the pleasures of the universe, do all the things he used to do with strangers. And he wanted to go home with Bones and cry into his chest until he was too tired to move because he broke his fucking cat.

Jim reached for the person he wanted more, and the firm grip on his hand told him he had chosen correctly.

* * *

Leonard McCoy knew he was a goddamned idiot, especially when it came to James Kirk. He had grown used to that idea a long time before he decided to get the kid a kitten for research purposes. But sometime in the last few months, the Time of Tribble, Leonard realized he had started to fall in fucking love with his best friend.

Which is why when he woke up with Jim curled up next to him, head on his chest, Leonard willed himself to wake up again.

It was a strange amount of intimacy for them - strange in that Jim had let Leonard hold him, let himself be comforted, let it happen instead of going home with the pretty girl and her lemony friend.

Leonard leaned down to press a kiss to Jim's forehead, and as his lips touched skin, Jim stirred next to him, looking up through his thick lashes to take in Bones' face.

"Hey," he said, sleep still lingering in his voice.

"Hey," Bones returned.

Neither man moved for a moment, locked in the intimate embrace of the morning-after-while-fully-clothed.

Finally Jim decided, in his Jim brain, to lean up and kiss Bones, right on the corner of his mouth.

"What are you doing?"

"I have this theory," Jim said, his smile too sharp for the morning.

"You always have a theory," Bones grumped, but he made no move to push Jim away.

"No, this is a good one. See, I have this theory that the only reason to kiss someone on the forehead, the only reason at all, is if you're in love with them."

"Dumb theory."

"Except it's not. It's intimate and sweet and caring, giving a piece of yourself without asking for anything in return."

"Please have a point."

"I think you love me."

"You think everyone loves you," Bones sighed, and started to move to get off the bed, though if he had his way he would have stayed there for a hundred years longer.

"Yeah," Jim agreed, "But I don't love everyone back."

Bones froze, staring his shock into Jim's eyes, trying to digest that little comet of what-the-fuck. It was still lingering, still fucking mocking his brain, when Jim leaned up and kissed his mouth again, and this time, Leonard kissed him back.

* * *

_The sixth time Lachlan Nikhil Rebane returned to the world, he did so as a small, pathetic bit of fluff._

_He was adopted by a Boy and his roommate and they called him Tribble._

_On the first Christmas they had, their little family of orange and yellow and brown, Lachlan got sick from eating the tree and had to stay in a place that smelled like frightening._

_His boys left him there for a whole three days and two nights, while people in white jackets and blue scrubs clicked their tongues and made little notes on their papers._

_When the Boy returned, Lachlan was not too sore and tired to notice, though he chose not to comment, that the roommate was holding his hand in a way that humans did when they were a mating pair._

_Lachlan flicked his tail when he saw it. It looked like his boys, small and pathetic on their own, had been adopted, too._


End file.
